Recently, one of my favorite things to do with my family has been playing various board and card games. There is a stark difference between how my wife plays and how I play with the kids. I play to win; my wife plays to help the kids grow in their skills and understanding of the game. For me, if my kids win, I want it to be legit. There can be no fake victory or asterisk. It has to be a legit victory. Over the last few months, I have noticed that my method has been paying off a bit too well. There have been times we have played Five Crowns ( rummy-style game) or Qwirkle (color matching game), and I have planned, strategized, and lay down my hand feeling like I just took the game and one of my sons makes a move that pushes them into the lead. There is an odd mix of pride that my sons truly beat me and a sting that only comes when your pride gets utterly stomped on because you thought you had won something. Defeat was, in fact, your last move.
1. Have you ever won something you thought you would lose or lost when you thought you would win?
While discussing promises, every believer had to know we would eventually get to the promise of Jesus. Too often in a believer’s life, we forget that we are known, and we can know, serve, and worship a God who has been the same “yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Because the Creator of the universe, our God, has always been the same, that means His plan is rooted in who He is. God’s plan is as true, steady, trustworthy, and without detour as He is because God does not change, and neither does His plan. That is true from Genesis to Revelation. That plan is from the moment God gives a person life until they return to ash. God’s plan has always stayed the same.
2. Why is it so hard for us to have faith that God and His plan are unchanging?
3. What is the best way to know God’s plan?
One of the most comforting truths about God’s plan appeared even at the moment sin entered the world. It seemed like God’s plan was unraveling, and He was caught off guard. Yet, God was in complete control. God Created everything, and it was good. God made man and women after His own image, and He said that it was very good. God fellowshiped with Adam and Eve in a way that we will not truly comprehend until we get to see God face to face. God gave Adam and Eve paradise and gave the command to Adam that he could “surely eat of every tree of the garden” (Genesis 2:16). God gave humanity everything (including life and paradise) and started His commands with blessings before He commanded restriction because there was a grave warning attached to the consequences. It is amazing that after all the abundant grace God lavished on Adam and Eve, that one “restriction” is what Satan preyed on to bring sin into the world.
4. As a result of Adam and Eve’s sin, what were the consequences for all humanity? Is that “fair”?
At this moment in Genesis chapter 3, it seems like all that God had done was for naught. All the intricate beauty of creation was now stained. The relationship between man and God was forever tarnished. Like me, when I think I scored the “W” playing with my children, Satan most likely thought that He had finally defeated God. If Satan could not bring down God, he might as well bring down what God loved. Little did Satan know that God’s plan was rooted in His character. After the fall of mankind, God Himself is the first recorded preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Genesis 3:14 records, “The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.’”
While reading verse 14, I could only think about Adam and Eve standing right there. All creation up until this point would have been majestic and beautiful; this included the serpent. We cannot think of snakes or serpents in the frame of reference we have today. In the Garden and in all of the cosmos, all things were good. This beautiful creation of God was cursed and punished because of what he did in such a transformative way. No one punishes in a way that does not alter. I have never punished my children by taking away their helicopters. Why? Because I do not own a helicopter, it makes so much sense that, at this moment, the serpent was transformed into a familiar creature that is slithering and creepy. For Adam and Eve, they witnessed God just lay into Satan! Put yourself in Adam and Eve’s “shoes” (I know shoes have not been invented quite yet); they were a part of disobeying God. The three culprits are all standing before God, and the first one to be judged gets turned from a thing of beauty to a thing that is despised. I do not see how Adam and Eve could not have felt the fear of “we are next.”
5. What are your first reactions to God’s wrath?
6. Why would forgiveness be the furthest thing from Adam and Eve’s expectation from God at this point?
During this great Gospel proclamation, before God delivered due punishment to Adam and Eve, God made sure He proclaimed the message of grace. Praise God! God delivers grace before He delivers consequences.
7. Why is it so crucial in our faith in Jesus to remember that God is a promise keeper of both wrath and blessing?
Genesis 3:15 continues, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
In the prototype of Gospel preaching, God promised that the war between man and the serpent would eventually be won by the offspring of Eve. The Hebrew word “offspring” here is zera’. The beauty of God’s promise in light of the fall is that the “seed” of Eve’s offspring would bring about the ultimate defeat of Satan. This promise is the announcement that one day, the Messiah would come and crush Satan with a mortal wound. It is as if God wanted to make sure nothing was mistaken at this moment in time. It was as if God could not wait to preach His plan for salvation. At this moment, as any parent would, God could not wait to tell what His Son would do. At this moment, God told Satan that he had not won anything because His plan promises, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20).
8. How should it make us rejoice to know that God’s plan for redemption was always Jesus?
9. What is significant about God being the first to preach the Good News?
For God, He promised that His Son’s victory would be “legit” and final. This is the promise, even though we live in a broken world that is full of heartaches and hardships, both internal and external. Our current world is the result of sin that entered the world. While it could be easy to focus on the hurt that would come out of that day, we ought to focus our hearts on the promise of the Gospel of Jesus that was also given on that day. The sin that we encounter every day is used by God as proof that we need Him to save us from this world and our hearts. We need Him to rescue us from living a life not knowing Him and His grace for us.
10. Why is God’s win in the beginning such an amazing promise to hold on to while we are living in the middle?